From Forests to Coal: A Slow Transformation

At the end of the Paleozoic era, when the Earth’s climate was hot and humid, large forests were successively buried, resulting in the formation of

coal

Coal is ranked by its degree of transformation or maturity, increasing in carbon content from...

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over millennia. At different stages of development, it takes the form of peat,

lignite

Rock whose properties are somewhere between peat and coal. It has a carbon content of about 7...

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(brown coal), bituminous coal and finally

anthracite

A type of coal that is 95% pure carbon. It is an excellent fuel.

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. Today, coal is extracted from underground mines or, when it is close to the surface, open-pit mines. Coal is still the main source of energy used for

power

In physics, power is the amount of energy supplied by a system per unit time. In simpler term...

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generation worldwide.